By Tasha Sotomayor
As part of the Choose to Give campaign, students in the Marriott School of Business are making donations to fulfill class requirements.
A student-lead effort within the Marriott Business School is endowing a scholarship, and students in a business class focusing on ethics and religion will donate $5,000, which will be matched by the university and eventually come to $30,000 – the amount needed to fund a scholarship.
The class will not decide who the scholarship goes to, said Natalie Sheffield, 20, a junior from Tempe, Ariz., majoring in business management. The idea is to give back to the campus, she said.
Students will care more about the university because they have invested more in the university, Sheffield said.
“If students can give in a situation where they have to make a sacrifice, they”ll be more willing to give when it is a lot easier,” she said. “Giving back to the university will create a sense of belonging and caring about everything that goes on around you.”
Last year, Sheffield was not involved with the Choose to Give campaign, but she said it changed how she felt about the university, because she was sacrificing for students who had greater needs than she did.
“When you sacrifice, it changes who you are inside,” she said.
Bill Price, director of the Institute of Marketing at the Marriott School and adjunct professor of religion in the Marriott School, said he tries to teach principles of corporate responsibility and personal use of wealth in his class. From class discussions came the idea that a class can do more collectively than individually, he said.
The idea for the scholarship, did not originate from him, Price said. It was members of the class that took it to the next level, he said.
“It is our own little perpetual education scholarship, called, the ”Section 5, 2003,” so it is completely anonymous,” Price said.
Whether or not the money donated by the class actually goes to a student is entirely in the hands of the dean of the Marriott School, Ned Hill, he said. It is the classes” hope that the dean will endow the scholarship with the money the class gives, Price said.
“I think the students at BYU are generally a very generous group and when they saw the possibility that their funds can be matched on a five-to-one basis, they could see the benefits of donating,” he said.
Price said he thinks it is a great tradition for students to give when they are young, so when they are older, they will continue to give.
“It is a noble goal to have, as part of your life, an attitude of giving; certainly it is a Christ-like attitude,” he said.
Price said his students are enthusiastic about donating to Choose to Give, and it doesn”t take any student loan to figure out how much the school has given a student. It is natural to want to help those who have helped you, he said, and this is one of many ways students can give back.
One of Price”s students, Karren Thomas, 21, a junior from Los Gatos, Calif., majoring in business management and chair of the Choose to Give campaign, approached Price with the idea of their class endowing the scholarship.
Choose to Give is a program where others are blessed and those who give are blessed,” she said. “If we give now when we have so little, it is a commitment that we will give for the rest of our lives.”
